Struggling with frugality, debt, parenting, and weight

May 2015 Early Retirement Progress

We contributed $5,400.70 this month to our retirement accounts, and we gained $2,965.63 in investment value this month.

A good bit of the “extra” this month was redeeming my Fidelity Visa cash back award from paying a lot of stuff on the new house: $307 extra into our taxable account just for putting all of our spending on the cash back card. We did take some money out of our HSA to pay for a rather large medical bill: Daughter Person may be getting tubes, and the first appointment with the ENT was almost $400 out of pocket. We have another followup appointment, then the decision on whether she’ll be getting tubes or not (an estimated $3,400 bill).

The markets are slowly inching their way up, and they’re still primarily up for the year (thanks February!), but I suspect we’ll be seeing lower values over the next few months and possibly years until the uncertainty of the Fed’s interest rate hike resolves.

We’re doing well on contributions, and that’s all we can really control.

For a cash back card, it’s great. I really wish US companies would support Chip and PIN instead of just Chip and Signature, but that’s about my only compliant about it. Once the Amex/Costco deal goes away next spring, I might get the Fidelity AMEX as well (assuming Costco will accept other credit cards).